Spain brings apologies to Bolivia for situation around President Morales’s jet

Spain has brought apologies to Bolivia for the situation around the jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales earlier this month in the airspaces of European countries. A note on apologies was handed to the Bolivian authorities on Monday by the Spanish Ambassador, Miguel Angel Vasquez. “Spain regrets the fact deeply,” he told reporters. “We really feel sorry over that incident and we’re bringing our apologies in hope that the situation is over.” At the time of reporting it was not clear, however, whether or not the Bolivian authorities had accepted the Spanish apologies. President Evo Morales was returning home from a summit conference of the Forum of Natural Exporting Countries in Moscow July 2 when the crew of his jet had to make an unscheduled landing in Vienna. This happened after Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal had revoked their permission for Morales’s flight across their airspaces. The authorities of the four countries, which are close allies of the U.S. in the North-Atlantic pact, motivated the weird decision by the suspicions that the former CIA technical analyst Edward Snowden, who had exposed the existence of ramified active programs for digital bugging and eavesdropping in the U.S. intelligence services, was flying on the same jet to a political exile in Latin America. The suspicions were fuelled by various indications that Snowden might be eyeing a political asylum in Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, or Nicaragua. Latin American states vehemently condemned the incident and sized it up as an attempt on Morales’s life compounded with trampling on international laws.